NOVEL WEB Chapter 14 – Obvious ending
Somehow everyone was able to react in time, Henry and Lois both raised their shields to stop an elemental each while I created an earthen wall to stop the last one. They didn’t look like anything I had seen before; they had an obsidian body that had lava flowing through cracks kind of like blood.
They were slightly taller than me at around 5 feet and 10 inches and had deep orange flames instead of eyes. It looked like they had fire on the tip of their hands, which was what they were trying to hit Henry with, that would probably not be pleasant to experience.
Somehow they could tell that I was the one that had cast the earthen wall and so was a squishy mage and started to turn around to attack me, fortunately both Henry and Lois used their taunts to get the attention off of me. I used the time my party members had given me to create three small rocks of stone that floated above my head. Once I had done that I sharpened the front of each stone into as fine of a point as I could manage.
I then shot all three of them at the closest fire elemental and the effect was instant. The monster shattered into thousands of obsidian shards. While I had been casting my spell everyone was attacking the elementals at random but it seemed like they weren’t doing much damage as neither of the other two had any visible damage on them.
Seeing that I could do so much damage I shouted, ‘Everyone target the monster Lois is fighting, I will take care of the one attacking Henry.’ Hearing this Kyra and Ant started to both back up Lois, even taking it down by the time I fired my spell and took down the last elemental causing their remains to be replaced by loot.
I took a quick look at what they had dropped and it wasn’t much better than the slimes. Instead of a few slime cores or goo that could be used in potions they had dropped shards of obsidian that could be used in weapons or wands. They all sold for roughly the same amount though. Not that I was complaining, money was money.
‘I don’t appreciate you taking charge in the middle of combat!’ Henry stated indignantly, causing me to stop looking at the loot and instead look at him, ‘I am this party’s leader in case you have forgotten.’ I decided to ignore him as I didn’t want to get into an argument in here. It would only slow us down and we needed to finish the floor as quickly as possible.
‘Is everyone ok?’ Kyra asked, ready to heal anyone that needed it. No one spoke up as we had reacted fast enough that the elementals didn’t get a chance to hit anyone. Once we had had a minute for the adrenaline to leave our systems we carried on, a little more cautiously this time. A part of me wanted to tell Henry that I told him that the dungeon just wouldn’t create an empty floor but there was no point.
While we walked I created a few more stone bullets but held them in preparation for the next encounter, Anthony had knocked an arrow in case something happened. About five minutes later we came across the next encounter, it was another 3 of those elementals again, except this time I was prepared so as soon as I saw one I shot my bullets at them, instantly killing it before the fight could even start.
Lois and Ant were also prepared and attacked another one of the elementals but couldn’t take it down, getting a bit more confident and deciding that she didn’t need to save all her mana for healing Kyra created a spiritual weapon in the form of a quarterstaff and hit the elemental, dealing enough damage to take it down. It seemed like magic bypasses some of their armour which is why I also seemed to be doing more damage than I should be.
The final elemental was taken down by everyone before I could recast stone bullets and we kept on going. Kyra could keep the spiritual weapon around for 10 minutes before she had to cancel it to conserve mana for emergency heals so we needed to hurry if we wanted to use it efficiently. Unfortunately we weren’t lucky and the next encounter took 8 of those minutes to find, this time it had 3 elementals again but they were joined with 3 red slimes that I assumed were fire slimes.
By this point, even if our leader was incompetent, we had fought together enough that we understood what everyone else would much better so we started to fight fluidly. I shot a few bullets into the chest of one of the elementals while Lois and Ant attacked the slime that was in melee with Lois, both monsters dying in an instant. Meanwhile Kyra shot her spiritual weapon at one of the elementals before causing it to smash down on the elemental from above.
The elemental received heavy cracks but it was still alive, Kyra being just a few levels too low to bring it down in one hit. Maybe if Henry had been paying more attention he could have finished it off but he was too preoccupied with a slime and an elemental. Instead of attacking the weaker opponent henry just focused on the elemental, just chipping away at it slowly.
As I was charging up my second bullet Kyra hit the cracked elemental again this time destroying it completely and Lois and Ant took care of another slime all that was left was what Henry was fighting. He looked pretty intent on killing the last elemental and I didn’t want him shouting at me for stealing his kill so instead I shot the last slime.
The bullet hit the slime but it was slowed considerably by its bounciness so I was worried that I hadn’t done enough damage, luckily I barely did enough and the core split in two killing the slime. It seemed that everyone else also had the same idea as we all stood around and watched for the next minute as Henry hacked at his target, ready to step in if we felt like he needed us.
Eventually Henry smashed the elemental one last time and turned around to us before saying, ‘Right, better keep on moving before we get boiled alive’ clearly not having noticed that we were waiting on him. We kept on walking for four minutes before we saw six slimes that were just bouncing around on the path. I thought it was a bit odd but I doubted every encounter on this floor was a trap so we approached them.
When we got about 25 metres away from them they started to shoot some firebolts at us, I used my stone bullets to counter as many as I could while Henry and Lois used their shields to block the rest. A few bolts managed to hit our frontline but it wasn’t enough to deal any serious damage. Kyra was still recouping her mana and couldn’t recast spiritual weapon so she stayed out of the fight for now while the rest of us slowly whittled the slimes down one by one.
When there were only two slimes left and we had let our guard down the elementals struck, by the time I had noticed them three elementals had managed to take down Anthony. Reacting as fast as I could I wrapped stone around myself to give me some protection and stood between them and Kyra. I didn’t have time to cast any stone bullets so instead I just tried to be as annoying as possible to them by getting in their way.
It only took a minute for the two paladins to take down the slimes and return to me. They were just in time as well since my armour couldn’t stop heat from getting to me, causing me to practically cook alive as I felt my HP drop. I quickly retreated behind Lois while going back to creating stone bullets. Lois took the two on the left while Henry only took one on the right.
Seeing this I used my first spell to even the sides and take down the undamaged elemental fighting Lois. By the time I had cast the second bullet Lois had taken down her other elemental so I hit Henry’s elemental as we couldn’t wait for him to finish it off. With the fight over Kyra ran over to Anthony, unfortunately it was too late so we had to wait for the dungeon to revive him in an hour.
In that time we didn’t talk much other than when Henry said how stupid we were for not expecting the elementals to come up behind us even though he also failed to see it coming at the start of the floor. I really hope he finds some people that can help sort out his issues because he was going to get himself killed one day and, even though I hated him, I didn’t wish for him to die.
Once Anthony had been revived I spoke up ‘It is clear that we are not going to be able to beat this floor. We are too disorganised and we even lost one of us in this last encounter, the boss fight is going to be too tough for us and if we leave then we won’t get punished.’
‘I am sure you would love for us to turn back now’ Henry stated, clearly annoyed at me for some reason ‘from what I can tell we are almost halfway to the boss and they only took Anthony down by luck, it won’t happen again.’
No one else spoke up as they didn’t want to anger Henry so I reluctantly followed the rest of the party. About five minutes later we came across a chest which just made Henry more sure of himself ‘See, if we had turned around like you said we wouldn’t have found this loot’ Henry said as he opened the chest.
It wasn’t much better than the chests on the first floor as it had a total of 5 bronze coins in change, 2 healing potions and an iron helmet. Henry took the iron helmet, a healing potion and 1 bronze coin worth of the loot, he gave the other healing potion to Lois and then gave each of us just 1 bronze coin each. Saying how the tanks should get all the healing because they took all the damage and that he should get the helmet because he was the leader.
After we had split up the loot we kept on going for 3 minutes until we came across the next encounter, this time it was only 4 elementals. By this time we had really gotten into a flowstate so we quickly cleared them, not even needing any healing. The next encounter was 4 elementals joined by 4 fire slimes.
In the past few encounters we found that one of Anthony’s arrows could take down a fire slime so I took down an elemental with a stone bullet while Anthony killed a slime with an arrow before the fight even started. Henry and Lois taunted the rest of the monsters but it looked like we were still going to get overrun so Kyra recast [spiritual weapon] and helped Henry deal with his elementals, taking down one more.
One of the slimes had slipped past the taunts because the two paladins didn’t work well together at all so Anthony quickly took care of it. I sent another bullet to kill an elemental that was fighting Lois before turning to the slimes as by this point Kyra and Henry had taken care of the last elemental. The last two slimes weren’t much trouble and we were quickly on our way again.
We may not have been hit much but Kyra and I were starting to get low on mana and Anthony was running out of arrows but we were close to the end so I didn’t bring up returning to the surface. We walked a bit more before running into a single slime and two elementals, which was a bit odd so this time I kept my eye out for some sort of trick.
Ant and I took care of one of the elementals and the slime immediately, Kyra still had her spiritual weapon up so she started to work on the other. The last elemental suddenly started to crack more than usual and we thought that it was dead. But instead of its body falling apart and leaving nothing behind this time its body became purely made out of lava and it turned around and ran away at a speed that I didn’t realise they had.
Before I could react Henry shouted after it and chased it, we couldn’t really leave him to die in the obvious trap so we raced after him. Unfortunately that just put us in the trap as well as after a minute of running three more elementals and four slimes popped up from the side and attacked us. I had been too focused on running to create any stone bullets but, even though I started creating some as soon as I saw the monsters, by the time they were ready Anthony had already taken down.
He had barely managed to take down two of the slimes with him but I doubted that would help. I shot my bullets at the closest elemental and killed it but I couldn’t cast it again before the rest of them got to me and without either of our paladins to protect me I went down incredibly quickly. As I went down my point of view left my body so I was able to watch the rest of the fight but I couldn’t help.
By this point Kyra and Lois had noticed the monsters and Lois was standing between them and Kyra tanking a lot of hits. Kyra was using all of her energy trying to keep Lois alive and using her spiritual weapon to whittle down the elementals. Unfortunately she could only take down two of them before she ran out of mana and Lois went down with Kyra soon to follow.
During this Henry had kept on chasing the runaway elemental like the idiot he is, it had stopped running when I went down but started to dodge all of Henry’s attacks. By the time Henry had managed to land a lucky hit and kill it the rest of the party was down and he was too distracted to see the elemental sneak up behind him and strike his back, instantly downing him.
With the party defeated I felt my consciousness fade as we were transported to the dungeon entrance where it would revive us with our punishments. I felt annoyed that I wouldn’t be able to adventure for a while but I felt like the experience was worth it and I got to meet Kyra. Before my consciousness fully faded though I heard a voice in my head say ‘hmmm, I could use you, maybe a different punishment will be useful for both of us.’
